Sand
by Errie Wyvern
Summary: Mozenrath fic. Mozenrath learns the pains of falling in love with...sand? Not nearly as humorous as it sounds.


Mozey torture. Always a fun pastime. Second chapter half completed, that one centers on Jasmine and her yearning for Mozenrath. =^-^= I am, if nothing else, a sick twisted little kitty. But it's fun that way!  
  
Sand.  
  
Hot black sand and rippling golden sand.  
  
He was surrounded by endless waves of sand. Dunes rose and fell, concealing a shy, half-risen moon the color of raw silver. There was a night blooming desert rose, halfway up the first dune. It raised itself to the moon, begging with its pale petals for a drop of nightly dew. A beetle scurried its way over another dune, this one swirled with onyx.  
  
This was his home.  
  
The sand had possessed him in some odd way. It hid in the corners of his elaborate citadel, sneaked into his slippers, napped in his long black tresses and somehow found it's way between his sheets. Waiting for him. Caressing every part of him, exfoliating his pores and removing layer after layer of dead skin.  
  
Of course, there were occasions when it would sneak into his glove. And he would cry with the pain of sand on his bare bones. It got between his joints and ground down cartilage. It scraped in between his radius and his ulna, danced on his carpals and had a hay day with his metacarpals. He had to wash his bones with precious water to be rid of the pain.  
  
But still, this was his home. The sand was his best friend, as sad as that fact was. In his dreams, a woman would form out of the sand and sit with him. She would be human. Always human. They would never do anything sexual. They would just sit in silence, looking over the dunes and the forever-shy moon. She would always smile at him before he woke, and then she would disappear back into the sand.  
  
Tonight, he did not sleep. He needed to see if she was real. If she would come sit with him under the chilly aura of the moon, now almost to the middle of the sky. He had begun to despair when there was a whisper of cloth behind him, and a familiar weight beside him.  
  
He could have cried.  
  
"I'm not human." Her voice was so soft, so grainy, so much like the sand that filtered through his fingers.  
  
"I know." He put his hand over hers and patted it lightly. He did not flinch when it disintegrated, only to be formed again from more sand.  
  
" I am the desert. I am the sand. I keep watch over these lands. I keep watch over you, Mozenrath." Her hands fell to his shoulders. He felt the heavy weight of her head on his back. Tears sprung almost immediately to his eyes. He knew she wasn't real. She couldn't have been real. Never, never in a million years would he have fallen in love with her if she were real. Never.  
  
"I feel your hands, at night. You clean me. You keep me soft and warm and protected. You must know by now that I..." Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by her lips pressed on his. They were full and soft and warm with a thousand Agrabah days. She pulled away and fell into the sand.  
  
He gasped and shuddered weakly. His hands went achingly, searchingly through the sand. He looked for her. He dreamed for her. And he never saw her again.  
  
So, the sand. The treacherous sand that had lured him so close then snapped his heart in two. He knew exactly what he'd do. He knew exactly how he'd get back at her. The very next day, he began pulling bodies from the sand. Running them on sand. Reviving them with sand. And with every body made, he could hear her scream of anguish far far away, a mere caterwaul on the shell of his ear.  
  
It was like music.  
  
And in the final battle, the final stand down between him and Aladdin, he ran. He ran back to that place where she had kissed him so long ago. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then. For all he knew, one had.  
  
He and Aladdin were both older. Far more mature than either would let on and far too hateful to ever let the other live. Jasmine had birthed three children in the years he had ignored them. But the time was right and the sun was sharp on the horizon.  
  
He knew he'd die here. Again.  
  
"Mozenrath, so we..." Aladdin's cocky voice had not changed and still grated on his brain.  
  
"Cut the crap, kid." He was so very tired. And the moon was beginning to show. "Spare me your little speeches about what's right and what's wrong. I have more ideas about that then you ever will." The sun had been so harsh, yet the moon seemed so soft, so comforting.  
  
"Yeah? Well, at least I've known love! I'll bet your own mother didn't even care for you!" Self-righteous bastard. Well, if he were going to prod at long-healed wounds, at least he'd know the truth behind them. Mozenrath simply didn't care anymore. It had been far too long, for life or death to come and dance with him.  
  
"I don't remember my mother. I don't remember anything about my past. It has been far too long a travel for me, Aladdin. Do you even care to guess at my age?" He knew his voice was flat and tired. Harsh, to even his own ears.  
  
Aladdin was shocked into silence for a few minutes. Then a tentive "47? I thought that since you were a sorcerer, you'd age different than me..." Well, that part was true at least. He did age differently.  
  
"I'm 624 years old. I've been dead for the past six hundred." He knew that Aladdin was shocked beyond belief. And Mozenrath didn't care at all. "The memories of my mother died with my mortal body. I have loved. I loved and I lost, in a strange, strange way."  
  
He turned and held out his arms. "Aladdin, kill me. A good hard stab through the heart should be enough to do me in. Come on. I'm just so tired, and all I want to do is sleep." Mozenrath just held out his arms, looking for the entire world like an ordinary 24-year-old boy. Not some powerful sorcerer. Not an undead...thing, looking for peace with his greatest adversary. He looked human.  
  
Which was precisely why Aladdin lowered his scimitar and whispered, "I can't do it. Not here. Not now. You...you could have children, Mozenrath! You could have children that you don't even know about...don't even remember..." The man looked despaired at his next thought. "You could be MY ancestor!"  
  
"Highly unlikely in any event. While I might have descendents on this planet, I hope to all that is mine that you are not one of them. Besides, you don't even resemble me."  
  
Then there was a shimmering, a shifting of the sand, and a rustle of cloth behind him. A familiar hand on his shoulder, a familiar head on his back.  
  
He gasped weakly, not trusting himself to turn around. He didn't have to.  
  
She walked in front of him, his own private goddess of the sand, of his home. Of the wild, untamed desert. Her skin was the color of the moon- washed landscape, her hair a soft tumble of onyx curls. Her eyes were color of the warm warm golden sand from so many years ago. She was draped in honey colored silk that barely covered her essentials. Her grainy voice played in his ear, "Come on, Mozenrath. There are places we need to see and sentences you need to finish."  
  
He took her slim, moon colored hand and began to walk, no thought to his body or Aladdin. As they began to glide over the first dune, she mentioned, in a light voice, "Did you know that there is a place where the desert meets a great body of water called an 'ocean'? It's called a beach. I'll have to take you there sometime. There are brown beaches, black beaches, white beaches, gray beaches, and even some beaches that are pure rock. Those are new beaches. They still have to be broken down into sand."  
  
She was staring placidly ahead, to their future, he realized. "I love you. Can you drink that water, from the ocean?"  
  
Her sandy eyes slid over to him and she grinned. "I love you as well. No, the water can't be drunk. It is far too saline and unpalatable. But there are rivers with sandy beaches. I can take you everywhere and anywhere, as long as that place has sand."  
  
He simply smiled back at her and continued into the setting moon.  
  
To Aladdin, it had been that the air had shimmered briefly. Just a rogue heat wave in the unpleasantly warm desert. But Mozenrath had gasped and collapsed right there. He'd gone rigid for a second, then reached out his hand and fell. Strange really. Oh well, he shrugged. Time to go home, he had important matters to discuss in Agrabah, about the new bathhouse going in.  
  
Oh yeah, he might stop in and say hey to Jasmine too.  
  
~*~  
  
Premonitions! Tell me what you think is going to happen in the next chapter and the right person gets it first! And an E-Cookie. =^-^= 


End file.
